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ELON MUSK IS SOUTH AFRICAN. WE SHOULDN’T FORGET IT.  
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William Shoki
February 28, 2025
New York Times
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_ Discussion of Mr. Musk often misses something: He is a white South
African, part of a demographic that for centuries sat atop a racial
hierarchy maintained by violent colonial rule. That history matters.
He is in fact a distinctly ideological figure. _

Photo illustration by The New York Times. Source photograph by Eric
Lee/The New York Times,

 

Elon Musk is everywhere.

He is firing
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employees, gaining access to important government data
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popping into the Oval Office
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appearing on Fox News
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President Trump and even attending a White House cabinet meeting
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some, his rampage through the institutions of the American state
augurs a replacement by private interests
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others, it amounts to a Big Tech
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For many looking on, it’s above all a baffling bromance
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the heart of power. However one understands Mr. Musk’s role in the
Trump administration, it has cemented his reputation as one of the
most powerful people on the planet.

But discussion of Mr. Musk, especially in the United States, often
misses something: He is a white South African, part of a demographic
that for centuries sat atop a racial hierarchy maintained by violent
colonial rule. That history matters. For all the attempts
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describe Mr. Musk as a self-made genius or a dispassionate technocrat,
he is in fact a distinctly ideological figure
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worldview is inseparable from his rearing in apartheid South Africa.
More than just an eccentric billionaire, Mr. Musk represents an
unresolved question: What happens when settler rule fails but settlers
remain? That’s what is playing out in America today.

Born in Pretoria in 1971, Mr. Musk had an upbringing
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of the white South African elite. The family was wealthy, despite his
parents divorcing when he was young, its economic standing shaped by a
system designed to assist whites. Mr. Musk doesn’t appear to have
enjoyed his elite education — there are stories of bullying and
loneliness — but he still benefited from the advantages it
conferred. Though his father, an engineer, was for a time a member of
the anti-apartheid Progressive Party, there is little evidence Mr.
Musk inherited his political convictions. Like many white South
Africans, Mr. Musk left the country before the collapse of racial
rule, settling in 1989 in Canada, where his mother was born.

He never returned, but South Africa clearly stayed with him. Take his
recent intervention into the debate over the country’s land reform
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an example. In response to a bill passed in January that allows in
specific circumstances the expropriation of land without compensation,
Mr. Musk used his platform to suggest that white South Africans are
uniquely persecuted. Never mind that land restitution is a broadly
accepted norm in postcolonial societies or that eminent domain or
compulsory purchase laws do something similar in the United States and
elsewhere. The Trump administration — amplifying fringe voices,
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distorted narratives of racial victimhood and using Mr. Musk’s claim
as a symbolic cudgel — was only too happy to play along.

Mr. Musk’s role in the controversy suggests he has not so much moved
beyond the logic of apartheid as absorbed it. His ideological
commitments — deregulated markets
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hostility to labor organizing
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nationalism
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bear its trace. In effect, his politics reprise apartheid’s economic
principles on a global scale: maintaining zones of privilege under the
guise of free enterprise while resisting any moves toward
redistribution as threats. You can hear it in his exhortations for
others to work harder and his pleas for him and his businesses to
receive special treatment.

Mr. Musk is one of a number of reactionary figures with roots in
Southern Africa
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found an unlikely home in Silicon Valley and now wield
disproportionate influence in shaping American and global right-wing
politics. These men, such as Peter Thiel
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Sacks
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emerged from a historical tradition that revered hierarchy and sought
to sustain racial and economic dominance, only to find themselves in a
world where that order was unraveling. Their politics reflect an
instinct to preserve elite rule, cloaked in the language of
meritocracy and market freedom, while channeling resentment toward new
power structures they view as threats to their position.

For them, southern Africa is never very far away. They are part of a
global right that has long been fascinated
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Rhodesia and its successor, Zimbabwe. For them, the loss of
white-minority rule in Zimbabwe represents the model of civilizational
decay — a formerly “successful” colonial state plunged into
chaos through decolonization. The specter of Zimbabwefication is
wielded as a warning against any redistribution of power. Now South
Africa — “openly pushing for genocide of white people,”
according to Mr. Musk
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is being made to take on the mantle of scare story. The implicit
argument is that settler power, once displaced, leads only to ruin.

It doesn’t help that South Africa has stood against
Israel’s genocidal aggression
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Gaza, leading the charge in attempts to hold it to account under
international law. This outspoken opposition has further alienated the
country from the Western powers that support Israel, reinforcing the
perception of South Africa as a rogue state in the eyes of the global
right. One of the front-runners to be Mr. Trump’s pick for
ambassador to the country, the South African-born Breitbart
commentator Joel Pollak, certainly believes it is
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like Mr. Musk, South Africa’s stance against Israel no doubt
confirms their view of the country as a lost cause — a once
“civilized” outpost of white rule now succumbing to the chaos of
majority rule and decolonization.

This reaction is both ideological and deeply personal. For all his
vehement opposition to woke identity politics, Mr. Musk is actually an
ardent identitarian. He has boosted claims from far-right South
African groups that the government is “race mad,” with 142 race
laws [[link removed]] on its books. But
their method for defining a race law is laughably broad: Any law that
makes race legally relevant supposedly qualifies. By this metric, even
laws that prohibit arbitrary racial discrimination or repeal
apartheid-era discrimination would count. Given Mr. Musk’s
aggressive dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion programs,
this obsession with one identity group is more than a little ironic.

It’s dangerous, too. The fixation has led to Mr. Trump ending,
by executive order
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America’s financial assistance to South Africa, with
potentially devastating effect
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treatment for H.I.V. and AIDS. South Africa is now anathema: Secretary
of State Marco Rubio is refusing
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travel there for the Group of 20 summit later in the year, saying that
it is a hotbed of “anti-Americanism” that is “doing very bad
things.” Given the administration’s fascination with old-style
colonialism — epitomized most starkly by its putative plan
to resettle Gaza
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“the world’s people,” along with the desire to buy Greenland and
annex the Panama Canal — it’s no surprise that it sees South
Africa as a dystopian prophecy to be resisted.

Mr. Musk, ever the entrepreneur, is happy to supply the propaganda.
But South Africa’s history tells a different story — one where
white dominance was not inevitable, where settler rule did not last
and where a different future, however uncertain, remains possible.
From his exalted position of power, Mr. Musk may do all he can to
reverse or subvert this story. But he won’t be able to. History,
unlike Mars, is not his to colonize.

_[WILLIAM SHOKI is the editor at Africa Is a Country
[[link removed]], an independent online publication.]_

* Elon Musk
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* Donald Trump
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* MAGA
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* Trump 2.0
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* Racism
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* South Africa
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* apartheid
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* settler colonialism
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* firings
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* State and Local Government Layoffs
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* mass layoffs
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* federal employees
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* Black workers
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* African Americans
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* social safety net
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